The Shrine

The only difference I see between the $300 one and the $450 one is a 100 GB lager harddrive and HDMI capability.

Who has which, and are you happy with it? Does anyone have the 20 GB harddrive, and is it big enough for you?

Edit: To be clear, I'm not asking a 360 vs PS3, or a 360 vs Wii comparison. This all assumes 360 as a given, I'm just looking for a comparison of the options.

Actually, I am pretty sure the Premium 360 has HDMI out now also. So the only difference is the extra 100GB. I have the 20GB (without HDMI) and it's plenty of room for me. If you're planning on downloading tons of demos and never deleting them, then you might need more space, but it's never been an issue for me.

As of about August of last year, every 360 - whether it be Arcade, Premium, or Elite - has an HDMI port it in. That makes the extra HDD space the only benefit of the Elite over the Premium.

I got my Premium in November of 2006 and last year, after having to send back my system a second time, I swapped it for a Halo edition one. As you guys know, I'm not one to d'load too many games or pay for a movie (Canadians don't have access to TV shows) I can get from a torrent for free, so I don't find the 20GB HDD very restrictive at all. It's actually only a 13GB or so HDD (look at the space you have on it when everything's deleted) and I've always got about 4-5GB free. If I even get close to 1GB, it's very easy to delete some of the stuff I have hanging around (like, say, the 2GB Ninja Gaiden 2 doc) if I need a demo.

I'm perfectly happy with my 13GB HDD on my system (and it looks cool :-). For my purposes, paying for the extra HDD space, whether the 60GB Premium or 120GB Elite, is just a waste of money.

Pure gaming you'll never use up the disc space of the 20gig. You'd need to be doing a lot of video/arcade downloading to use it up, and anything you do download can be redownloaded later if you need the space. So the extra disc space really isn't needed these days, especially if it's that much more expensive. I'll be using mine heavily with Netflix once the Fall Dashboard update comes out, but I imagine that'll all just be streaming anyway.

I've got the old pro (20G, no HDMI) and I would be happier with a larger HDD since I like to buy a lot of XBLA games. Mine is on the verge of death right now. It won't play GTA 4, and it is freezing up quite a bit. I'm going to play the shit out of it today in hopes of killing it before rock band 2 comes out.

Also, I've RRODed once before.

We have the Elite..plenty of space left that we probably will never use. Never had any issues.

I'm on my third Pro. No signs of it's death yet, though. This one is a refurb from Microsoft. I can only assume the models on shelves now are much more solid.

Like everybody has already pointed out, unless you're planning on stuffing the HDD with movies, the Elite is a waste of money given that all new systems are HDMI compatible. If you'd still like to use it as a living room media device, just stream movies from your hard drive.

On the other hand, as far as HDD space is concerned, the fall update will allow you to install any game to the drive, which may eat up to 9GB of space. This would only be a problem if you plan on having more than one game installed at a time.

But hey, the Elite is BLACK (omg teh aw3som3 lolz!) It did come with 2 wireless controllers I believe.

Seraphina wrote:But hey, the Elite is BLACK (omg teh aw3som3 lolz!) It did come with 2 wireless controllers I believe.

I should take a shot of my cool-ass Halo edition one. Black don't got nothin' on army green with goldish accenting and black military markings on it :-)

My Halo one came with the Plug 'N Play pack. Didn't the Elite come with that too?

I was just at Target and happened to walk by the Xbox section. The Xbox 360 Pro's they are currently selling include the 60gig HDD for $350. Guess that $50 price drop wasn't just to get rid of the 20gig's

I've got a pro. I've downloaded a heap of Arcade games and I'm nowhere near the drive's capacity. I can only see it being a problem with game installs, but it's rare that I'm actively playing more than one game at a time, anyway.

I wish, though, that Microsoft hadn't decided on using its own bizarro proprietary hard drive technology. That you can just chuck any old notebook drive into a PS3 is a lovely thing.

Yeah...I really hate the proprietary drive. I'd have replaced my Xbox harddrive long ago if I could do it easily.

Zeus wrote:

Seraphina wrote:But hey, the Elite is BLACK (omg teh aw3som3 lolz!) It did come with 2 wireless controllers I believe.

I should take a shot of my cool-ass Halo edition one. Black don't got nothin' on army green with goldish accenting and black military markings on it :-)

My Halo one came with the Plug 'N Play pack. Didn't the Elite come with that too?

Bleh, military style isnt my thing and Im not a Halo fan.

I'm not sure what the plug n play pack is...it had a headset..

Seraphina wrote:

Zeus wrote:

Seraphina wrote:But hey, the Elite is BLACK (omg teh aw3som3 lolz!) It did come with 2 wireless controllers I believe.

I should take a shot of my cool-ass Halo edition one. Black don't got nothin' on army green with goldish accenting and black military markings on it :-)

My Halo one came with the Plug 'N Play pack. Didn't the Elite come with that too?

Bleh, military style isnt my thing and Im not a Halo fan.

I'm not sure what the plug n play pack is...it had a headset..

You tryin' to tell me that don't look purdy? :-)

The Plug-N-Play kit is a rechargable battery with the cord to plug it into the USB slot so you can recharge it

A friend of mine has the Halo edition. While I think it looks cool, I still prefer the basic white over anything else for some reason.

Lox wrote:A friend of mine has the Halo edition. While I think it looks cool, I still prefer the basic white over anything else for some reason.

I'm bored of the white or black consoles. I want some colour in mine and that one looks quite nice. It's one of the nicer home console colours I've seen. I was lookin' forward to the coloured Wiis but that ain't gonna happen 'til next year

Although, my GBA SP, DS, DS Lite, and PSP Slim have all been red. I guess I like that colour quite a bit :-)

I could go for a dark red or something like that, I think. That'd be pretty cool.

Thanks for the input, guys. Sounds like the smaller harddrive is a fine option.

As you have probably surmised, my next-gen defenses are weakening, and I'm starting to seriously consider getting a new system. My internship is paying pretty well, so I may treat myself to a toy when it's all done.

You won't be disapointed with an Xbox. There is so much good stuff for it right now.

360 is definitely the best overall and "gamer" system right now. Lots of selection and you can easily get tons of games rather cheap

360 all the way. I had no idea about all the stuff available besides game playing on the 360: demos, trailers, themes, full games (and trials you can play before), etc, etc, etc

We have a Wii, but havent played in..almost a year now?

ahem

Kupek wrote:To be clear, I'm not asking a 360 vs PS3, or a 360 vs Wii comparison. This all assumes 360 as a given, I'm just looking for a comparison of the options.

Seraphina wrote:We have a Wii, but havent played in..almost a year now?

That's a preference thing, though. There's been TONS of great games for the Wii in the last year

I think I kinda opened the door up when I said I was thinking about making a purchase. I said that initially because I didn't want this to turn into one of our console war threads. If I get a new console it'll probably be a 360, but that's a subject for another thread.

Kupek wrote:I think I kinda opened the door up when I said I was thinking about making a purchase. I said that initially because I didn't want this to turn into one of our console war threads. If I get a new console it'll probably be a 360, but that's a subject for another thread.

Tease

Kupek wrote:I think I kinda opened the door up when I said I was thinking about making a purchase. I said that initially because I didn't want this to turn into one of our console war threads. If I get a new console it'll probably be a 360, but that's a subject for another thread.

I honestly think it's the best choice for you as well. The other two are more specialty systems right now

Kupek wrote:Thanks for the input, guys. Sounds like the smaller harddrive is a fine option.

If by smaller you mean 60gb, then yes. It doesn't look like they'er selling 20gigs anymore

Yeah, just when I thought the 360 was starting to slow down, I realized that game systems don't really release games until Q3 and Q4. The lineup that starting to happen with the 360 is stellar.

Tessian wrote:

Kupek wrote:Thanks for the input, guys. Sounds like the smaller harddrive is a fine option.

If by smaller you mean 60gb, then yes. It doesn't look like they'er selling 20gigs anymore

Kup, don't buy a system before September 7th. There's gonna be a permanent $50 price drop then.

SineSwiper wrote:Yeah, just when I thought the 360 was starting to slow down, I realized that game systems don't really release games until Q3 and Q4. The lineup that starting to happen with the 360 is stellar.

I see this Xmas as pretty slow myself. What are you lookin' forward to? I mean, there's Gears 2, Rock Band 2......and? Left 4 Dead and Dead Space look interesting, but nothing to wet your panties over. Same with Mirror's Edge. If I had a PS3 I'd be all OVER Little Big Planet and the Wii really has nothing.

Particularly when compared to last Xmas, this one looks very slow

I've heard talk of the price drop, yes. But if I buy one, I won't do it until October, after my internship is up.

Kupek wrote:I've heard talk of the price drop, yes. But if I buy one, I won't do it until October, after my internship is up.

OK, coo. It would suck if you bought one only to find out a week later that it dropped by $50

I own an ELITE, and it is a lot of hard drive space, but with a lot of the changes coming in Fall I am glad I went with it. Specially for the installs

Anarky wrote:I own an ELITE, and it is a lot of hard drive space, but with a lot of the changes coming in Fall I am glad I went with it. Specially for the installs

Are people really finding the load times that unbearable on the 360? I hardly notice them myself. I mean, none of the 360 games have Hurdy Gurdy length loads or anything (if you haven't heard of those load times for PS2, they're legendary)

New and recent XBox 360 releases worth looking at:

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (not a fan, but many are)
Fable 2
Too Human
Ninja Gaiden II
Lost Odyssey
Infinate Undiscovery
Gears of War 2
Left 4 Dead (hearing really good things about this one; and you should be looking forward to ANYTHING Valve makes)
Alan Wake
Deadspace
Halo Wars
The Force Unleashed
Fallout 3
Rock Band 2

Not to mention that if the recent XBL games are any indication, we'll see some more good smaller games in the future.

(EDIT: Yeah, you're right; how the fuck did I forget those? I guess I was looking at 360 exclusives too much.)

SineSwiper wrote:New and recent XBox 360 releases worth looking at:

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (not a fan, but many are)
Fable 2
Too Human
Ninja Gaiden II
Lost Odyssey
Infinate Undiscovery
Gears of War 2
Left 4 Dead (hearing really good things about this one; and you should be looking forward to ANYTHING Valve makes)
Alan Wake
Deadspace
Halo Wars

Not to mention that if the recent XBL games are any indication, we'll see some more good smaller games in the future.

The hell kind of list is this? The correct answer would be a crappy and incomplete one. At the LEAST how the hell did you forget about Fallout 3 and The Force Unleashed?? Both come out before GoW2

Yeah, it's pretty much Gears 2, Fable 2, Fallout 3, and Rockband 2 for me. Maybe I'll take a look at Banjo-Kazooie later and Left 4 Dead and Dead Space (anything with "dead" in the title should be good, right? :-) I'll look at depending on how they're received, same with Mirror's Edge. Everything else is just there

My bad, Tess. I've added those.

SineSwiper wrote:My bad, Tess. I've added those.

Damn straight-- I already have Force Unleashed pre-ordered Guranteed to be at my door on the day it hits shelves.

Tessian wrote:

SineSwiper wrote:My bad, Tess. I've added those.

Damn straight-- I already have Force Unleashed pre-ordered Guranteed to be at my door on the day it hits shelves.

Same here. I did the "pre-order online, pick up in store" thing on Gamestop.com. I cannot friggin' wait.

I still have to play Ninja Gaiden 2 and Too Human, so I'm on backlog so far. I'll wait until I'm done with them.

SineSwiper wrote:I still have to play Ninja Gaiden 2 and Too Human, so I'm on backlog so far. I'll wait until I'm done with them.

I've been told both of those games are pretty flawed and repetitive... NG2 didn't even sound worth playing unless you have masochistic tendencies, and Too Human seems fun but repetitive... worth $40, not $60

I'm having a lot of fun with Too Human at the moment, but I agree; I wouldn't want to have paid full price for it.

Yeah, it is a short game, and the combat should have been much better. NG2, though, I've heard that it's really good, despite the camera problems. Something that is half a good as NG1 is still worth it.

SineSwiper wrote:Yeah, it is a short game, and the combat should have been much better. NG2, though, I've heard that it's really good, despite the camera problems. Something that is half a good as NG1 is still worth it.

I'd watch the GT review of it first... or maybe it was the X-Play review I watched? Either one should paint a better picture for you

I've already bought the game. I'll see it for myself.

Was at best buy today just dicking around and i noticed all the PS3's were gone. Do you think they stock light on them since they dont sell that well or is there something im missing?

Flip wrote:Was at best buy today just dicking around and i noticed all the PS3's were gone. Do you think they stock light on them since they dont sell that well or is there something im missing?

Isolated incident, probably. I still see a bunch of the MGS4 bundles at Walmart here.